Rembrandt’s portrait of an unknown man via Times Online
Estimated at £25m, a portrait by Rembrandt is expected to raise a record price for the artist at Christie’s in London [Guardian UK]
Despite crisis, Mikhail Piotrovsky- the director of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg is planning an expansion, reinstallation and several new international venues [ARTnews]
Tate’s plan to increase display space by 60% is challenged by a £140m shortfall; donation for the past year amount only to £4m due to recession [The Independent] in related Tate announces upcoming exhibitions of Gauguin, Picasso and Chris Ofili [Guardian UK]
More on ex art-dealer Anthony d’Offay, who traded a $160m profit for a chance to provide the British public with an access to contemporary and modern art [Bloomberg]
Reuters Felix Salmon calls on Bloomberg’s Scott Reyburn who claims that Damien Hirst’s sales are recovered to levels seen at peak of the art market boom; Salmon claims the analysis by Reyburn is unsubstantiated [Reuters and Bloomberg via ArtMarketMonitor]
Ai WeiWei via Twitter
Ai Weiwei publishes on twitter images of himself going in for surgery after undergoing an attack by Chinese police [The Art Newspaper]
RoseLee Goldberg, Performa’s founding director, reads an excerpt from the Futurist Manifesto, announces details and gives hints about the surprise performances and their locations [Artinfo]
The director of the MET, Thomas Campbell, shares that the painting reattributed to Velazquez last week, “Portrait of a Man”, may soon travel to the Prado Museum in Madrid [ArtDaily]
More on the Artist Pension Trust, an investment vehicle that provides artists, who rarely engage in financial planning, with financial security when they retire [Guardian UK]
An antique shop in New Mexico put on sale a Van Gogh sketch for his painting Night Cafe, from a May 13 burglary, worth $250,000-1million, for $250 [Artinfo]
Caravaggio, The Supper at Emmaus via Artinfo
The National Gallery in London is sending Caravaggio’s The Supper at Emmaus to be exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago from October 10, 2009 to January 31, 2010 [Fine Art Publicity]
Since Thursday, 110 galleries, most of them in Chelsea opened their doors to the new art season, showcasing what sells, what is missing on the art scene and which gallery spaces are more beneficial to the sales [New York Magazine]
Pope Benedict XVI organizes an art summit reaching out to 500 contemporary artists to reunite in Vatican [BBC via Art Market Monitor] in related After his initial refusal to participate in Vatican’s art initiative, that will attempt to reestablish the dialogue between spirituality and art, Bill Viola rearranges his schedule and accepts Pope’s invitation [Artnet]
Curator of Modern and contemporary art at Menil Collection, Franklin Sirmans will be appointed chief curator oc contemporary art in LACMA and will assume his position in January [Culture Monster]
Anish Kapoor via Times Online
After an attempt to investigate the very nature of the scale of Anish Kapoor’s work and the man behind the work in an article published last week, Times Online writes on Anish Kapoor’s retrospective, providing a survey of the artist’s career, at the Royal Academy [Times Online]
An interview with Turner Prize winning video artist Steve McQueen where the artist speaks of his childhood, artistic influences, his musical preferences and view on art world and Artist Yoshimoto Nara speaks of musical, artistic and personal influences on his work [Guardian UK]
Velazquez, Las Meninas via The Wall Street Journal
Velazquez’s “Las Meninas”- an enigmatic work that has contributed to the shift of its very medium from the realm of craft to that of art [The Wall Street Journal]
Marlene Dumas, Tracey Emin, Marc Quinn, Antony Gormley and other contemporary artists donating works to Sotheby’s “Art for Africa Auction” on tonight [ArtDaily]
September 16, at the Guggenheim International Gala, a $1.2m Ellsworth Kelly painting received by the Museum as a gift was auctioned [Auction Central News]
The life and death of Dash Snow [Guardian UK]
Art critic, Holland Carter, proposes smaller and more smartly curated shows to take place of large blockbuster exhibits [The New York Times]
A new 37,000-square-foot outdoor space is lent temporarily to Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for exhibitions and performances by developers postponing their building projects, hence the name- LentSpace [The New York Times]
Richard Serra, Shift (Detail) via Arts Journal
As a 1970 iconic earthwork by Serra outside Toronto remains endangered, a litigious battle concerning access to and protection of the artwork continues [Arts Journal]
New York’s Armory show will move in geographic pattern from representing one city to another, its first choice is Berlin [Lindsay Pollock]
A short interview by brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, discussing their drawings [Guardian UK]
David Zwirner is to be the first dealer to solely represent The Estate of Dan Falvin [David Zwirner]
New works by Julian Schanbel, Paul Chan, John Currin and Francesco Vezzoli are currently on show at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in an exhibition inspired by Mary Magdalene [metoperafamily.org]
Book review: “I Sold Andy Warhol (too soon)” by Richard Polsky [WallStreetJournal]
Zac Posen, RTW Spring 2010. Via WWD.com
Rosson Crow designs floral prints for Zac Posen’s Spring RTW collection [wwd.com]
Julian Schnabel is selling pieces from his art collection, including work by Picabia, Braque and Balthus to finance his divorce [New York Post]
The Roman Empire – Russia’s Roman Abramovich’s toychest of expensive things, inlcuding works by Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud, is examined [Wall Street Journal]
Sales of Chinese art at Sotheby’s Total: $15,532,479 Exceeding Expectations [ArtDaily]
The king of Japanese Contemporary Art, Takashi Murakami, speaks openly about the state of the art market, his legacy and his upcoming plans [Artinfo.com]
An encounter with Takashi Murakami in the Boom Boom Room at the Standard Hotel, New York following his opening at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea [NYTimes]
